Hours after releasing a lie detector test he says debunk claims he sexually harassed a fellow lawmaker, state Rep. Steve Lebsock of Thornton made public his detailed response to a formal complaint filed last month by state Rep. Faith Winter, but the Westminster Democrat dismissed the polygraph as a stunt and said Lebsock’s statements don’t prove anything.

“Steve Lebsock is the first elected leader in America to prove his innocence since the #MeToo movement started in October of this year by passing a polygraph,” according to a statement issued by Lebsock Thursday morning. He added that he plans to “keep fighting” and is ready to “reveal the motives for the false claims.”

Winter was having none of it.

“This is another abuse of power by Lebsock, who is desperate to sway the investigation. Everyone knows what happened. He is a serial offender,” she said in a statement.

Winter and former lobbyist Holly Tarry say Lebsock made unwanted sexual advances on them and have both filed complaints with legislative leadership. Nine other women have said Lebsock sexually harassed them or intimidated them at or around the Capitol, according to news reports.

“I can say with complete confidence that I did not touch, or attempt to touch Faith Winter at all,” Lebsock, a candidate for state treasurer, wrote in a five-page letter he released to the media. The letter, which Lebsock said he plans to hand over to an outside firm hired to investigate Winter and Tarry’s complaints, described numerous interactions with Winter over several years and argues the accusations are part of a “pre-planned smear campaign” aimed at derailing his political career.

He alleges Democrats have been trying to thwart his run for state treasurer since at least May and that a supporter warned him in September he would be facing bad news the following month. Winter went public with her allegations Nov. 10, and Tarry and former legislative aide Cassie Tanner said later that day Lebsock had harassed them.

“The truth will come out,” Lebsock wrote in the letter. “It’s really disappointing that numerous public officials asked for my resignation only hours after the allegations in the press and before hearing my side of the story. It is obvious to many that this is an orchestrated campaign which is politically motivated. I will not step down. I will not resign.”

Since news broke about the allegations against Lebsock, he has resisted calls to step down from Gov. John Hickenlooper, House Speaker Crisanta Duran and Morgan Carroll, a former Senate president who chairs the Colorado Democratic Party, among others. State Rep. Matt Gray, a Broomfield Democrats, says he’ll introduce a resolution to expel Lebsock from the House on the first day of the 2018 session, which convenes Jan. 10. It’s a move that would take a vote of two-thirds of House members and hasn’t been done for more than 100 years, legislative officials say.

In a press conference Thursday afternoon, Lebsock said it was suspicious Gray was calling for his resignation about an hour after the initial story broke, suggesting that Democrats had coordinated a campaign to force him from office and weren’t reacting spontaneously to the news.

Winter said she stood by her statements and blasted Lebsock’s letter as being “full of lies, distortions and contradictions.”

Sounding both dismayed and exasperated, Winter told Colorado Politics that Lebsock’s accounts of several conversations between the two were warped, while other accounts merely detailed routine political talk rather than lay bare some sort of conspiracy to snuff Lebsock’s ambitions.

“I always hated being around him. Of course, I seemed nervous and jittery. I was never comfortable around him,” Winter said after reading Lebsock’s descriptions of her demeanor while the two conducted legislative business and talked politics. In his letter, Lebsock maintained Winter seemed to be embarrassed after she had initiating conversations about sex at a retreat for Democratic lawmakers.

“I tried to avoid conversations with him, that’s why he thinks I was so weird,” she said. “I was always trying to get out of conversations with him.”

As for brief exchanges about who would run for a crucial state Senate race, Winter said they hardly pointed toward the grand conspiracy Lebsock was imagining.

“Of course we talk about politics and races and who was running for what. That’s what we do. I feel like all those conversations – I had those conversations with Joe Salazar, I had those conversations with Dominick Moreno,” she said, referring to two other Adams County Democrats.

“Having political conversations about who’s running for what is 100-percent normal. We live in the same county and we’re on the floor together. This is not anything weird. I don’t know what point he’s trying to make here.”

At a Capitol press conference, Winter said it was “one of the major flaws in the system” that accused harassers get to see complaints before being questions so they can prepare their responses point-by-point. Legislative leadership meets Friday to review policies surrounding sexual harassment complaints at the Capitol.

Lebsock said at his own earlier press conference that he decided to take the polygraph because an investigation into Winter and Tarry’s complaints had been underway for nearly a month but he hadn’t heard from the fact-finder probing the allegations.

House Majority Leader K.C. Becker, a Boulder Democrat, said in a statement issued by the House Democrats that the independent investigation “remains active” and maintained Lebsock had been routinely informed about its status.

“It is typical in such cases for the investigator to talk to the accused after interviews with others have been completed,” Becker said. “The investigator called Rep. Lebsock yesterday to schedule that interview, and as of this morning the investigator hadn’t heard back from him yet.”

Lebsock told Colorado Politics he first received communication from the investigator, Michele Sturgell of the Denver-based Employers Council – formerly known as Mountain States Employers Council – in an email that arrived minutes after his Thursday afternoon press conference was scheduled to start.

By late Thursday, the two were in the process of scheduling an interview, according to emails reviewed by Colorado Politics, but Lebsock objected that Sturgell might not have the required “weeks to interview all of my witnesses and conduct a thorough investigation” before the General Assembly convenes on Jan. 10.